THE SYSTEM

A BASIS FOR DEVELOPING A GENUINE ECOLOGICAL CONSCIENCE

by Pablo Gonz

Many thanks to Sarah E. Owens for proofreading this version in English.

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INDEX

1. By way of introduction 2. The natural dilemma 3. Ecology and politics 4. Ecology as a sum of individual ecologies 5. The city: flagship of the system 6. What is the system? 7. Alienation and palliative measures 8. On television 9. The system and its parts 10. The economic subsystem 11. Economy and society 12. Economy and spirit 13. The economic maelstrom: an example 14. Properties of a small economy 15. The sociopolitical subsystem 16. The origin of power 17. A critic of big democracies 18. A theory of moral change 19. The ideological subsystem 20. Animism and religion 21. Culture and truth 22. By way of summary

1. By way of introduction Humans are material-spiritual beings but our cultural tradition has insisted from time immemorial in showing us as divided. Inner division of humans in body and soul allows us to establish a hierarchy between both elements, and has negative repercussions on human-environment interaction. A real ecological revolution will not be a political revolution but a moral evolution: we are going to be at peace with our environment as we learn to be at peace with ourselves. Nowadays, dissatisfaction is very common. People usually say: The world is coming to an end. Global Warming will have disastrous consequences on all domains. On a worldwide scale, there are terrifying numbers of poor people, unemployment, violence, xenophobia, revival of fascism, difficulties in gaining access to drinkable water We cohabit with horror and react against it with indifference or distress. Are the indifferent more insensitive? Not necessarily. Are they more responsible? We all are responsible because we all are the system. The world can improve and we are going to support this improvement. Lets relinquish fatalism. Lets learn to be patient and critical. Nobody tells us anymore: What do you want to be when you grow up? Why? Because we already are the specific answer to that question. Its time to understand that our individual acts compose the quotidian history of human race. We can write it our own way, if we understand that society is a complex organism, and, therefore, that any little mutation operating within it will have necessarily an effect on the whole matter. One person is incapable of changing all the world but he or she is perfectly capable of changing a part of the world.

2. The natural dilemma Throughout history, an idea has spread amongst us that we are radically different from the environment: we are capable of producing things, converting habitats, communicating at long distance, etc. Some believe that we have cut ourselves off from the environment, converting humans into visitors or fleeting guests on the planet. Such ideas are false. The human race has evolved on earth as a land species. Therefore, humans are equally natural as the rest of the beings. Furthermore, human products are perfectly natural as well, since they were made starting from natural substances (there are no others). This way of looking at
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ourselves (this anthropology) is basic for developing a genuine ecological conscience. We are part of the natural system. Thereby, any alteration caused by us on it will out of force have severe repercussions on ourselves. From distant memory, we have transformed the world for our own gain. Our stone tools were harder than our hands. Thus, we managed to break things, apparently impossible to be broken. Our wooden spears and lances were sharper and stronger than our teeth. Thus, we managed to drill into things, apparently impossible to be drilled. As we wore clothes and handled fire, we had most of the planet within our reach, and we managed to turn every other species into the fruits of the earth. Afterwards, we started to produce food. Thus, it became necessary to fell forests, to build fences, to plow fields, and to settle down in houses as a place to rest after work. Later, we learned how to handle metals; we invented industrialization, cities This gradual evolution of techniques has introduced into Nature an increasing disorder, popularly known as pollution. Nowadays, it is obvious that our impact as a species has reached global proportions. Nature, in fair reciprocity, is reacting. It does and it will, blindly, without rest or scruple. Can we change this? No. For living on earth, humans must understand that they are sons and daughters of this planet, a planet they will never manage to dominate. While I was writing these pages (February 2007), it was known that human activities (mainly industrial ones) were (in a probability of 90%) responsible for Global Warming. Earth is feverish. And so, the planet sets out the natural dilemma. To keep going ahead (to persist in giving priority to our instinct for innovation) or to stop and remember that we also have a survival instinct? Can we move to another planet? Can we move to Mars, for instance? Can we build space colonies? Can we conquer the galaxy? Not with the present-day technology. Therefore, we must take good care of correcting the way we are living on earth.

3. Ecology and politics Politicians are representatives, delegates elected and paid by people, for managing, as best as they can, something that belongs to people: Power. Politicians are technical employees but they have assumed in our society a domineering role, becoming lords of their lords. If a common citizen tries to tell them something, he or she will have great difficulty. If you summon a politician to a meeting, he will never come. And if you phone one of them, he will never answer. On the other hand, if you want to visit him or her at the city council or parliament, you wont be welcomed -other public employees (policemen) will
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take good care of you-. Politicians come into contact with their legitimate lords only once every four years, as they go hunting votes. Then, they smile and show great kindness, even reaching the point of giving you a quick handshake. After a second smile, the winner in election will return to their nest and persist in upholding the system. This is the payment of a debt contracted with their electoral financiers: big industrialists, big traders, big bankers, big media. Therefore, can we expect politicians to lead this ecological evolution so necessary for us? No. Then, why are we delegating our power to them? The answer is because we have no other choice under the current model of society. Politics is a complex technique. It requires thorough knowledge of the laws and their enforcement mechanisms, organizing committees of experts, serving the international situation Could each of us (millions of citizens from many nations) master the political art? And, in the unlikely event that we succeed, could we agree many times a day on different topics? Would we find enough time to do it? How should we intercommunicate? Politicians are essential in the context of huge societies, societies based on productive specialization and capital flows, societies that have led us to the present situation. Out of these sort of societies, politicians are useless. Would you expect they will contribute to an end of these huge societies? No. Then, who can help us to stop this system, released to the mere destruction of our planet? No one, but ourselves. Overcoming this model of society depends on the adoption of a new behavior (a new moral) and the decision depends on every man and every woman.

4. Ecology as a sum of individual ecologies We all are who caused the present-day ecological crisis. Every one of our acts contributes to success of the system. Therefore, if we want to stop it, our acts must be critically analyzed and modified in the most reasonable manner. For example, if two neighbors buy two newspapers each, they could agree to buy only one, and swap them. This would already be a step forward. The next one might be to realize that every newspaper contains the same news, and that every newspaper is a servant of the system. So, our most reasonable act would be not to buy newspapers at all. But, lets come back to our question: is it not unsuitable to agree with a neighbor to swap newspapers? Perhaps. But this little sacrifice is going to bring you many unexpected benefits. These would be, for instance: talking for a while, going up and down the stairs, saving room in the paper dumpster, etc. On the other hand, your new attitude is going to mean a proportional reduction in paper industry. The most effective ecological weapon against the system is the management of consumption. We ought to start by doing without the unnecessary (Do I really need this?). Later, we must redefine
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our relationship to staple commodities (those obviously not renounceable). If we give up buying any staple commodity, then we must get it by other means. For example, producing it. In the same way as we delivered the power to politicians, exactly so, through industrialization, we made and make over, day after day, the ability of producing our own commodities: manufacturing, food and clothes. We work to earn money to buy items. But we also could work to produce these items by ourselves. It is going to be necessary to develop our creativity and manual skills.

5. The city: flagship of the system Cities are cause and effect of a way of life based on productive specialization. In other words: city, industry and trade always walk hand in hand. If anyone plans to build a factory or open a shop, he or she will need two elements easily found in a city: labor and markets. The city needs people as a means of production and as a means of consumption; it is a huge creating and destroying machine. If you watch a city from outside from an objective point of view, youll see raw materials coming in and rubbish coming out. What for? To assure that five million people can live crammed together. If we observe carefully the inhabitants of any city, well immediately realize that their quality of life is not so high as proclaimed. Any employee (as well as any employer) must get up early (always at the same time), even though he didnt sleep well the previous night. Straight away, he is going to take a shower (since permanent closeness to other people forces doing it); and hell prepare breakfast (coffee or other stimulants are indispensable). Afterwards, our employee (or employer) must get dressed very well (namely with industrial and matching clothes) and take the children to school (entrusting them to specialists on making perfect citizens, employers and employees, who will occupy their respective positions in the system and will contribute to its enlargement). Our employer (or employee) is already going to work (along overcrowded routes). He parks his car and prepares himself to invest all his energy in keeping the system working and growing. After eight hours (he took a couple of minutes for lunch), our model citizen gets out of the machine, picks his children up, takes them home, feeds them with frozen foods, puts them to bed and sits in front of the TV until sleep overcomes him. In this way are produced and reproduced, every day, the human alienation, the triumph of homogeneity, the sacrifice of persons on the altar of the system, their programmed renunciation of time, space, sleep, calm and family. All this in exchange for money: money for paying mortgages (the house will not belong to
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you until youre fifty or sixty), money for paying electricity (you need artificial light because you get up before the crack of dawn), money for supporting those institutions (schools and universities) that take care of distorting your sons and daughters - making them pieces useful to the system - money for food shopping (next to your home theres no vegetable garden but a paved street), money for dressing (even though the clothes in your wardrobe would be enough for three lifetimes), money for paying money (you asked the bank for a loan in order to buy a new car), etc.

6. What is the system? The system is a twister whirling on us, enveloping us, confusing us. However, there exists the possibility to understand it. We only need to look at it critically, slowly, from far away. Lets pay attention to every act of ours and well see how they contribute to the success of system. Its second energy source is Nature. The system is everything that splits up each concrete person from their concrete environment: a huge society, an endless culture, a way of conceiving humans that obliges them to feel like fleeting guests on earth. Spiritual managers of culture (ideologues and scientists) as well as material managers (industrials and big traders) and system-managers (politicians and law-enforcement) have come between humans and their environment, snatching from both the right to free interaction and monopolizing the necessary contact that should exist between them. Earth has begun to protest this outrage, this over-demand, this unfairness of receiving rubbish in exchange for wealth. The time to act is now. This is the right moment in which we must begin to recover all we put in the hands of representatives and delegates. This is the right moment for reassuming responsibility of our lives, best before the twister grows until collapse and we fall into the hole.

7. Alienation and palliative measures A milestone was erected on the blind road leading to destruction of both people and its natural way of interaction: alienation, that social disease, that involuntary protest against over-demand. Peoples alienation is, along with environmental alienation, the clearest sign of the deplorable success of the system. The system has wrecked one of the most important social structures in human history: family. Every day there are more single parents, more kids living in two homes. Every day there are more urban tribes: boys and girls, abandoned by irresponsible parents, go out on the streets and get involved with other
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children suffering similar evils. Personal reactions against the impact of the system over individuals are varied. We know about organic reactions (cancer, allergy, stress, depression) and other consequences easier to be described as cultural. Alienation breeds derangement. Hard drugs, soft drugs and legal drugs (coffee, tobacco, alcohol, television) allow us to forget our problems. But just temporarily. All these substances help to reduce pressure but they do not eliminate the causes behind them. Other typical palliative measures are: going to the gym or taking holidays. In the first case, people try to balance their mental and physical performance. In the second case, people escape from the system. Cities cannot be considered the ideal environment for humans when everyone, at the end of the work week, is getting out of the concrete jungle and looking for fresh air, peace and relaxation.

8. On television Television is a powerful weapon at the systems service. Public channels are in hands of politicians; while cable TV is in hands of big capital. But, who is sitting in front of the screen? Common people: those numbers composing the foundations of the system. Advertising (the ultimate reason for television to exist) flows with deplorable TV-programs. The price of advertisements depends on ratings. So, it is easy to understand that TV-programs (always from a systemic point of view) will not pay attention to serious content but instead to fluff, trying to dazzle millions of eyes, but each day less and less sparkling. TV-defenders argue that television supplies people with what people demand: rubbish for the stultified masses. All right, but where this stultified mass come from? Television turns us into that. Television is not an instrument for education (I mean the wholesome sense of the term: education as a collection of tasks leading to facilitate the physical and spiritual development of an individual). Television is an instrument for education in the wicked sense of the term: a vehicle of doctrine bringing individuals into line with the necessities of a superstructure. Every day, thousands of different stimuli are thrown over the drowsy eyes of millions TVviewers. These stimuli affect them anyway. Therefore, to expose yourself to such a storm of incitements, ideas and behaviors is very risky. Besides, television devours your scant free time, ties you to an armchair (disables you), imposes silence on places where dialogue should prevail, distracts your attention off the systems flaws, incites you to boundless consumption, to debts, to homogeneity, to alienation, to loneliness

9. The system and its parts The system can be studied as several subsystems empowering one to each other. Since the concepts of material act and spiritual act correspond to a view of humans as divided beings (body and soul), economic subsystem and ideological subsystem are essential parts of the system. The same can be said about the sociopolitical subsystem, manager of the aforementioned ones, as referee of the public life.

10. The economic subsystem According to a traditional division, economy consists of three sectors (extractive industries, manufacturing and services). These three sectors feed one another as they are different stages of the same process: the use of material wealth that the earth is offering us. As we buy anything, we are favoring the services sector. This sector leans on transformation industries that represent a benefit increase for extractive enterprises. Each of us stands by the final link of a long operation chain whose ultimate consequence is the decline of our planet. In order to attend our consumption demands, mining companies dig into mountains, industrialized farmers and ranchers destroy the natural landscape, forest engineers fell old-growth woods In turn, transformation and service industries create unhealthy environments such as cities, highways, ports, airports, factories, overcrowded neighborhoods, power lines, antennas, malls Companies are constituted by one employer and several employees. Their goal is to fulfill the needs of the system: flow of goods and capital. Grow or die is the slogan. So, if a businessman fails, he gets rid of his employees and closes the company. On the contrary, a successful businessman who had obtained important benefits, never shares them with his staff. What will these benefits be used for? For growing (that can mean hiring new employees) or for increasing efficiency (that usually means firing some employees). Acting so, he manages to multiply his extractive, transforming or trading power. And benefits keep growing. Maelstrom!

11. Economy and society Different sectors of the economy feed each other. So, the economic subsystem, through a boundless need of growing, takes energy from its surroundings: from environment (exploitation of raw materials) and from human beings (exploitation of labor). The growing demand on work performance of
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women in our high stress world increases cultural and psychosomatic infertility. This would undermine the systems groundwork; but it has been invented to secure new work forces. How? Looking for them in the most disadvantaged zones of the planet. On the other hand, the growing demand on time devoted to the company undermines the family structure, interwoven with other social issues. Something so much appreciated in companies like willingness to travel represents many times to live in a constant flux of home moving. Thus, our affective bonds or social relations become broken or weakened. The employees feel every day more lonely and vulnerable: their dependence on the company grows.

12. Economy and spirit The system obtains certain energy fees from our spirit too. Our ideas and wishes rule our actions. This is well known by social managers. Through advertising, the system influences the definition of our wishes and reduces our ideas, our wide-ranging human ideas, to a compressed set of materialistic thesis. Any exhausting trading gestures have started to be typical: it is frowned upon going empty-handed to a birthday party; not to give a present or card to your mother on Mothers day is equivalent to hating her. The system uses in its own gain the immense power of love: an enormous social energy more and more weakened by daily abuse. Human minds get built with beliefs, prejudices, certainties, wishes, knowledge and dreams, composing altogether a full worldview that conditions us on deciding. As there are common and different parts from one person to another, not to admit this shows an in depth ignorance of human nature or reveals the intention of enclosing us into a reductionist view. We are mixed and moody. And this doesnt fit to one of the preferred concepts of establishment: society as a homogeneous mass of ignorant workaholics. Stemming from a materialistic perspective, the common human factors are emphasized, the usual differences are obviated, so that every person can fit to each other, to the laws, to the homogeneous industrial products.

13. The economic maelstrom: an example In the preceding pages an image of the system was outlined as a seemingly autonomous entity, which rotates and grows expanding itself. It is a vortex or maelstrom that expands from its increasing speed, and obtains from its
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surrounding the energy needed to perpetuate its cycle. It is already clear that the power of the maelstrom comes from its last components. Persons and their acts sustain the system. So, deactivation of the system will come from changes in personal attitudes. Simple gestures such as not to wrap a gift or to reuse a match represent an environmental improvement. In the first case, we avoid the need of a paper. In the second case, we avoid the need of a second match. Perhaps someone wants to tell us: Arent these acts too tiny? Indeed, our life and that of our neighbors and compatriots are composed of minute acts. But it is worth remembering that all those minute acts have repercussions on our humankind as well as on our common environment. If I save every day a match, Ill have saved soon a match-box. Besides, Ill be an example for other people. Good ideas spread. We must analyze our daily acts in order to stop the maelstrom. It is necessary to take a step back and observe our acts in context. For example, several elements, conventionally described as material and spiritual elements, take part in the act of writing these lines. Material elements are: the pen I use, the paper on which I write, the candles that provide light for me Spiritual elements are: my motivation, my wish to put pen to paper First of all, I realize that every material element is of industrial origin. Therefore, I am contributing to the success of the system. The plastic this pen is made of is a petroleum product; so, writing with this pen represents a contribution to the success of the oil industry. It helps also to sustain the metallurgical industry (my pen is a metal ballpoint pen) and chemical industry (my pen is fulfilled with ink). We could analyze paper and candles in the same way. But let our analysis dig deeper. Raw materials used for manufacturing these objects were transported from its extraction points to factories, from factories to shops (benefits for transportation industries); telecom companies intervened (obtaining a corresponding benefit) in the marketing, etc To write these lines is a clear contribution to the maelstrom. Therefore, I must change my attitude. I can decide, for example, not to write anymore but this would undermine severely my income source. However, I can rework my act assuring its impact is not so deep. From now on, Im going to write with a pencil (wood degrades quicker than plastic), at day light (for saving candles), and on discarded paper (obtained from the copy shop). Perhaps you think these small contributions to stop maelstrom are insignificant. But they are not. If reasonable, they will grow in time and can be adopted by others. Every change of habit is a tiny fact heavily loaded with future.

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14. Properties of a small economy Our relation to the environment can be fair or unfair. If we act so Nature doesnt feel our presence, then our relationship is fair. The opposite would be unfair. In recent times, the exponential growth of human needs has turned unfair to the environment. We are already many people and our behavior shows it. We are not interested only in fulfilling our basic needs. We have become greedy for superfluous things. This could cause starvation, epidemics, massive die-offs, migrations, astonishing political changes If we want to perpetuate ourselves on this planet, we must be fair with it again, return to it as much as we asked for, not pay with rubbish the goods offered by the earth. Who is going to bear an exchange not aimed at fairness, not redounding in balance? We are on time to correct ourselves: lets regulate our number and attitude; lets invent smaller and less aggressive economies, material-spiritual economies attending the complex human needs. A moral reformation (recovering of our original form) demands a reduction of the material aspects of our life, to go in depth into its spiritual aspects: to have less and to be better, to have less for being better. A small economy could be defined as a human group able to produce food and energy. Since this economy uses simple tools and consumes products closer to its sources, it is simpler and cleaner than the present one. This kind of economy would allow us to recover human freedom and creativity. Thanks to the small economy, families might live without destroying that of which they live. Namely, their exchange with Nature will be fair again. Furthermore, the small economy is not forced to focus on the extractive sector (food and energy production). Humans can manufacture countless things. We have given up much of our power (if not all of it) to industry. To produce with our hands those things that we need has substantial benefits: it forces us to exercise our imagination, to develop our manual skills, it provides us with high quality & low priced products. Besides, these products will be exactly to our liking. None of the gestures surrounding self-production has to do with the use & throw away model. This model of consumption was devised by big businessmen, so that the frequency of shopping gets always higher, so that we dont have in account the quality of products, so that raw materials become an unimportant factor, so that all this redounds, at last, on a new purchase. If we turn to dominate the extractive and productive sectors, then we are in good condition for recovering markets, monopolized by material managers with the collusion of law and law-executives. Barter is an essential element for someone able to produce his or her own food and other staple commodities. It
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also brings many unexpected benefits. Barter requires no money, allows output of surpluses, and promotes the sense of mutual aid among neighbors. All these gestures go against the system and, therefore, benefit our environment and our people.

15. The sociopolitical subsystem The sociopolitical subsystem is an abstraction representing those parts of the system that deal with systemic management: material and spiritual humanenvironment interaction and mutual relationships between economic and ideological subsystems. Therefore, the sociopolitical subsystem is the keystone of the whole building. So, you can understand that this had been separated from common people. In exchange for political representation, we have surrendered our capability of making decisions, generating that way something known as power. It is powerful every act, meaning imposition of every humans will over others, not minding either guarantees or legitimation that may justify this act. Nowadays, law is the mechanism used by the power to express itself at a large scale (so, law must be written, which allows it to be transmitted at a long distance). Law is the abstract tool of politics. Money is the abstract tool of economy. The abstract tool of ideology is truth. Power, politics and law exacerbate mutually and grow together, surrounding people like a maelstrom, like the large-scale economy, like its typical architectural expression: city. Density of traffic signs (inanimate delegates of law) is overwhelming in cities, slightly smaller on routes and almost nonexistent in rural roads and paths. There are no traffic signs in the country: people still can decide their own way. Getting back into any city, well see that everything is subjected to rules or laws. Overcrowded cities force politicians even to plan every movement of its citizens. The city, flagship product of an economic system based on industrialization and trading, needs order to perform well. In order to get it, the system uses homogenization. We are not equals before the law, but equals by law. Power, politics, law, city, industry, homogeneity, trade, money Here is the list of the major systemic manifestations and instruments.

16. The origin of power The most ancient civilizations (which originated as first cities, first hierarchical societies, first laws, and first writings) were born in very fertile agricultural areas (the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, middle basin
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of the Yellow River, Mesoamerica and the Andean Altiplano) spreading from these regions to dominate surrounding spaces. This formation and expanding process has always been characterized by absorption of productive and social surpluses, by using them for the perpetuation and growth of the mechanism. If any human group manages to impose its will onto another, it will obtain a supplementary energy easy to be used for imposing onto a third and a fourth group. However, members of the fifth group probably had created a joint defense with the groups numbers 6, 7 and 8. Before this point, the power was expanding. Thereafter, it was recreated. Let the games begin! Meanwhile, it will be critical to coordinate efforts in material, spiritual and sociopolitical matters. Sooner or later, fortresses are erected in which artisans hide, priestly palaces are built to store surpluses, farm labor is militarized (concentration, streamlining, order, law). Thus, the system takes its first steps, shy but aggressive.

17. A critic of big democracies The most successful political system in our world is the large-scale democracy. Citizens delegate power temporarily on politicians according to a law of laws (constitution). But the politicians are concerned primarily to stay in power, and they dont address the needs of people but the needs of powerful classes. This attitude has a necessary repercussion on the statu quo (keeping of social order) as well as on a progressive exacerbation of the maelstrom. Presentday democracy, political formula of the most developed countries, works to benefit the system (not to benefit people who sustain it). Besides, the present-day democracy pays attention only to great numbers, forgetting that behind them are people, flesh and blood people. In such a case, we can say without blushing that democracy is the tyranny of the many. If, election after election, a minority of voters is postponed, they will at last self-marginalize. Why does the vote of a nochild family have the same value as the vote of a family with eight children? In other words: are children not affected by political decisions? Why must politicians or congressmen be loyal to vote for their parties? Why dont we take advantage of the new technologies for broadening public participation in politics?

18. A theory of moral change If we wanted to fight a huge force like the system, it would be necessary to create an alternative force. This would mean to recreate power, generate conditions for an eventual confrontation with unimaginable consequences. We must subtract forces from the system by means that lie on our daily power. We
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can reduce speed, individual by individual. We can pass on our experience to other people. However, all these gestures demand a change of attitude, of habits, which can be difficult for many persons. But difficult is not the same as impossible. According to a traditional point of view, we think that adults do not change. But the real fact is that we learn, we gain experience throughout our lives. We can judge. We can create. We can listen and choose. We are beings in perpetual change: this is perhaps the only thing we cant alter. Moral evolution is a gradual change of face. So, those persons who want to act according to this, must do it without over-demand, serving as an example for others. We dont need heroes. We need people.

19. The ideological subsystem In attempting to satisfy its material-spiritual needs, the human being forms an image of him or herself and its environment. These images condition human behavior. And so, the control of mechanisms influencing the formation of this anthropology and this worldview has been cause of dispute throughout History. Lets speak about religion. According to Christian doctrine, the immortal, divine, human soul lives in our body as a guest, returning to God after dying. We have already seen how this inner division has clear repercussions on the ecological image of humans. We consider ourselves, therefore, as fleeting inhabitants of this planet. From now on, well show that this inner division is reflected in the way in which people imagine its environment. If we concentrate our spiritual facet into an entity called soul, it is possible for us to repeat this gesture at a larger scale. We will be ready for gathering the virtues of the universe into an entity called God (God will loan a part of these virtues to us, afterwards). The logical derivations of these mental acts are dire anyway: 1) our body is not spiritual at all, 2) our environment is just stuff, 3) our body must be ruled by a soul, 4) our environment must be ruled by us. On the contrary, a holistic view of humans incorporates an inextricable union between spirit and matter. At the same time, this view conceives us as intimately connected with our environment (both spatially and temporally). When this philosophy is adopted, the human spirit feels released. It is never more a locked soul but it flows into the body, mixing with it. The idea of dissolving the outer boundary of persons is born as an outcome of this union. Consequently our spiritual faculties will also be spread over to animals, plants and minerals. We will realize then that animals make their own decisions (express spiritual skills); so, we will feel intertwined with them. Can we say something similar about vegetables and minerals? Let me pose the question in another way: Where is the
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boundary between animate and inanimate beings? Who decides this is organic and this is inorganic? Humans, in their eagerness for classifying, have set up absurd boundaries in the grand show of Nature. Are humans made of minerals or not? Is the chemistry a branch of physics or not?

20. Animism and religion According to a holistic view, an animist man knows that every being, including him, has a spiritual facet. Therefore, he feels twinned with the environment, maintaining with its elements (other material-spiritual manifestations or beings) a relationship based on love and respect. This could explain, for example, why the Mapuche people in Chile ask permission of a mint plant before tearing a leaf, or why they always walk sparing the land any damage. These kinds of gestures are incompatible with those imposed by the system. How could it be possible for a poultry farmer to have a good performance in his job if he had to ask permission to slaughter every chicken? No, a holistic, integrated, organic, animist human is not suitable for the system. It prefers men and women that are divided into soul and body, that are alone or surrounded by inanimate stuff. Animals without spirit, plants without spirit, stones without spirit, can be manipulated, with neither respect nor love. All classical religions (Egyptian, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), except those which may be interpreted as simple models of behavior (Buddhism and Taoism), have encouraged the individual division, favoring in this way the existence of the power structure. But this structure has also encouraged religions since it is easier to separate our responsibilities as subjects. Hierarchy is born out of this double sequestration: power stands between humans and Nature (abstraction of matter) and between humans and God (abstraction of spirit). Henceforth, the human-environment dialogue will be mediated, becoming less and less fluid. Hierarchical economy (landlord, foreman, farmer; or manager, boss, employee) emerges from the monopolization of humans material-side. Hierarchical religion (bishop, priest, parishioner) and science (doctor, teacher, student) were born from a monopolization of humans spiritual-side. All forms of politics (chiefdoms, monarchies, empires) will ensure a correct operation of the machine, imposing the force of (trading, divine, scientific) laws over both material and spiritual managers. Expressions like Allah is great and God is almighty reveal the ultimate purpose of human spiritual management. Establishment seeks abstraction in order to boost hierarchy, it accumulates the spirit of each animal (including humans), each plant, each stone, in order to shape God. It is a four-act drama:
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animism, polytheism, monotheism, atheism (the spirit everywhere, the spirit in several places, the spirit in one place, the spirit nowhere). Humans are materialspiritual beings. Therefore, we dont feel adequately represented either by a doctrine that dispenses with the formulation of the spirit (pure materialism) or by a doctrine that considers the Universe as a mere mental delusion (pure spiritualism). Both doctrines are inhumane and will bring disastrous social consequences.

21. Culture and truth Culture is, according to the dictionary, the way of life and customs, knowledge and degree of artistic, scientific and industrial development in an age or social group. Culture exists because it helps humans satisfy their materialspiritual needs. Not the opposite. Official anthropology dictates the right view of culture. According to this, culture develops per se, as if endowed with life itself, growing on the vast field of History. Such a progressive way of interpreting culture -lets observe its astronomical counterpart (Big Bang theory)- supports the system and receives nourishment from it, giving a historical and even biological justification. However, if we study the history of human ideas (history of culture), well realize that truth is a changing entity. Almost every assertion can become true depending on observed phenomena, its interpretation and assessment. Thus, we conclude that scientific truth is not truth, in a narrow sense of the term, but convention, signs admitted by everyone, construct for a mutual and peaceful understanding. If honest scientists admit that their knowledge is based on unproved theories; if they perceive, therefore, that science is nothing but a huge mental model floating in a bottomless sea of doubts; then, we all can work legitimately on defining our own truth, cutting ourselves off from those who have managed and still manage the concrete knowledge relationship between us and our environment. A gross example of personal loss (scientific ability transferred to the system) is the oblivion of ancestral medicinal techniques. Our grandparents knew which plants to use to get healthy. We dont. Now, the pharmaceutical industry stands between us and our environment.

22. By way of summary Our ideas about ourselves and environment condition our way of acting on it. Now the human being is not connected with natural phenomena since it has
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been divided into body and soul. The rest of this drama has consisted of deepening the wound through a sequestration and management of the specific acts of men and women. The dialogue between people and environment is not dead (that would be impossible) but it is every day channeled, ruled and massified by the servers of the cultural, political and economic establishment. These social groups are the head of subsystems that shape the system. In any case, this dynamic structure cannot stand by itself. It obtains energy from the environment and people. It started to do that five thousand years ago. The system was born in Sumer in the mid-fourth millennium BC spreading since like a wildfire all around the Globe: during the first moments, across on the planets surface, and then, following a vertical line (monarchy, plutocracy, democracy). When the kings lost control of the system, bourgeois classes were involved in issues of power. Later, peasants converted to workers fought for democracy and economic well-being. This allowed them to consume many products (growth of the system) and invest in the stock market (to be proprietors thereof). Nowadays, this growing and dizzy idea (this maelstrom) begins to flood the vertical line as well. Individuals are suffering from social pressure. The system forces people to produce and to consume (to get huge amounts of resources from the natural environment, and to give huge amounts of rubbish in exchange for it). Natural spaces get filled to the brim: humans and Nature fall ill. Our planet will become warmer. Polar caps will melt. Sea levels will rise flooding the best lands. Here is a man without paradise. What can common people do about these terrible circumstances? We can ignore the lessons of History and follow the path laid by the unconscious. We can seek technical solutions. Finally, we can change our attitudes. We should do it not radically but carefully: getting slowly back to our place every day, in every act, individual by individual or in small groups, with humility, for generations. We have a responsibility as a species: dont forget it. Lets admit that the division of individuals in body and soul has cut us off from our environment, generating a multifaceted barrier: power, maelstrom, system. Many people have encouraged and still encourage the system with acts according to their conscience, conditioned by their needs, and inspired by their genius. However, it is necessary to know that such a way of life leads to destruction. Do we want to follow this path of rift, or do we want to follow that of reconciliation with ourselves and our environment? Lets meet inside ourselves. Lets erase that boundary between soul and body. Lets live according to this. Nobody can make for us this intimate decision. Nobody can prevent us from making it. Here is the greatness of the smallness.

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